nternational Viewpoint #150 • October 31, 1988 habitants back to their regions of origin, led
FOR THE FIRST TIME since the military coup d'etat on June
19, 1965, Algeria is under a state of siege and the army has fired on demonstrators in a number of cities. The brutality of the military repression is unimaginable for a population traditionally used to seeing the national media denouncing similar practices in Israel, South Africa and Chile.
In only six days, the national uprising of Algerian youth has already resulted in 500 deaths (176 according to official sources), hundreds of wounded and hundreds of arrests.
These figures illustrate better than any analysis the absolute confirmation of political rupture between the mass of the people and the ruling class.
SAÏD AKLI
INCE national independence, Al-
S geria's National Liberation Fron seriously shaken up by such an immense mass movement. Admittedly, this is not the first time in the ten years of President Chadli Bendjedid's regime that young demonstrators have shouted "Chadli, murderer!", or violently attacked symbols of the regime, of wealth and of shortages. But past demonstrations have never reached the scope of a national uprising.
After the confrontations in the Berber heartlands of Kabylia and the social strug gles of 1979-80, the Chadli regime set itself the objective of breaking up all social opposition with a combination of repression and promises of a "better life". It has
6 sautially succeeded by isolating Kabylia, snuffing out the renaissance of the trade- union movement and putting an end to the student agitation. At the end of 1982, it even allowed itself the luxury of breaking the momentum of the fundamentalist movement after earlier having used it against the "communist threat".
But it has never totally succeeded in completely smothering social opposition. Numerous confrontations between demonstrators and the forces of order regularly indicated the new political relationship of forces that were being established between the government and the masses.
Since 1982, Algiers, Oran and Kabylia have seen school student demonstrations on a number of occasions, which have often ended up in violent battles with the police. In 1983, the government's decision to demolish the shantytowns surrounding the big cities and to use force to send the into very violent and traumatic confrontations, with mass demonstrations in Algiers, Annaba and Constantine. In April 1985, the inhabitants of the historic neighbourhood of the Algiers' Kasbah were violently attacked by the police during six consecutive nights for protesting against their murderously unhealthy living conditions and the lack of water. November 1986 saw a student strike for better living conditions in the university's halls of residence. Thanks to brutal repression, this was transformed into a veritable youth uprising in Constantine and later in Sétif. The ferocity of the confrontations, the attacks against symbols of the government, the ransacking of big stores and distribution of food to the people very much resembled what has been taking place now for a week in Algiers and elsewhere.
In the last few years, football stadiums have become the venue for mass rallies, with supporters regularly shouting out socio-political slogans.
Peaceful demonstrations met police brutality
In February this year, the overzealousness of cops who were policing the Oran stadium provoked counter-violence from young people, leading to prolonged battles in the town's streets. In July 1988, the people of the small mining town of Ouenza on the Tunisian border, who were peacefully demanding water, came up against the traditional brutality of the police. Their demonstration was turned into a veritable riot, with the offices of the mayor, the party and the union being set ablaze.
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ALGERIA Young people take on Chadli regime
October 31, 1988 • #150 /nternational Viewpoint
A complete list of such confrontations would take up a lot of space because they have touched every region of the country. These popular demonstrations in general begin with basic social demands, but police brutality and the arrogance of the government systematically transforms them into very violent confrontations, where young people are always in the vanguard of the counter-attacks. The government has always succeeded in reestablishing order with a stick and carrot approach. First, by imprisoning hundreds of youth, quickly condemned in parodies of trials. Secondly, by temporarily satisfying the social demands that have been raised, either by inundating the local market with current consumer goods, increasing the amount of drinking water or by distributing a few homes accompanied by a blast of publicity. But, in spite of the return to calm, each confrontation adds its weight to the profound process of political rupture between the masses and the Chadli regime.
Government revealed in its true colours
No-one can any longer doubt the bourgeois nature of this government. What remains of its populist ideological mask, less and less inclined towards socialism, leaves no more illusions. Each time such confrontations break out, they are followed very sympathetically by people in other regions. But after the success of the repression, the same lesson returns like a leitmotiv on a mass scale: the need to coordinate the protest movements. This lesson is not only understood by revolutionary militants. It is systematically and consciously expressed on a mass scale because the isolation and dispersal of the mobilizations is the main strength of the repression.
It is in this sense that October 1988 is only the result of a long process of apprenticeship in street demonstrations and confrontations against the forces of order by young people who, mostly born after 1962 the end of the war of independence, have lived for a quarter of a century in a climate where all social opposition and democratic expression have been stifled.
The uprising of Algerian youth condenses all the accumulated lessons and experiences of recent years. Its strength lies mainly in its rapid extension to various districts of the capital, Algiers, and then to a whole series of other cities such as Oran, Annaba, Sidi Bel Abbes, Mostaganem, Blida and so on. Never has such a movement of popular protest been so widespread, developing into a genuine national uprising whose violence is only equalled by its
True to its tradition, the government sees the hand of "conspirators" everywhere, who are supposed to have been behind the organization and the coordination of the uprising. But the only guiding force behind this forceful and spontaneous popular uprising is the generalized disaffection to be found in every region of the country against shortages, the high cost of living, the stink of a corrupt system and the black market, the arrogant wealth of the nouveaux riches, the arbitrariness and violence of the police, and so on.
The Chadli regime has multiplied the reasons for mass discontent and exacerbated social contradictions. At the beginning of the 1970s, when the price of a barrel of oil reached close to $40 and the dollar was beating all records, it had considerable currency reserves and resources available. But it wasted all this wealth with a short-term. economic policy, abandoning efforts for industrialization and job creation and squandering public money on prestige construction projects, unproductive imports and giving a face-lift to buildings in the big cities. The regime completely failed to foresee the turn in the economic situation and the collapse of the hydrocarbon
February 1986 caught the government completely unawares, and the international economic crisis erupted suddenly into the daily lives of Algerians. The austerity that had been justified under the previous president, Boumedienne, for boosting industrialization and the economic development of the country, was denounced by the Chadli regime with its promises of a "better life" But, very quickly, austerity reappeared with a much clearer class content and in an even more severe form because it had no economic counterpart. It hit the mass of people even harder, coming as it did hand in hand with the first results of Chadli's infitah [opening up] policy, which resulted in increasing the considerable accumulated wealth of the regime's dignitaries, private entrepreneurs and speculators of all stripes.
### Wealth gap widened under Chadli regime
The ongoing campaign in favour of "business freedom" had not attracted private investment to productive and job creating sectors, in spite of its presentation as the nation's ultimate resort in preparation for the end of the oil boom and for overcoming the bureaucratic ossification of the state sector. The "saviours of the nation" remained basically attached to easy pickings and speculative practices that allowed them to accumulate considerable fortunes in a record time, which they ostentatiously spent on deluxe goods. This increase in wealth, characteristic of the Chadli epoch, contrasts more and more explosively with the austerity imposed on the mass of the people. The infitah promoted a price explosion and a flourishing black market. Shortages came back, wages had been frozen for several years, workplaces stopped taking on labour and began to make labour cuts and youth unemployment grew in line with a population increase that is one of the fastest-growing in the world
ALGERIA (850,000 births a year for 23 million
This austerity was especially hard for the large numbers of young people (75% of the population is under 25) born after independence and increasingly demanding in terms of their social aspirations. With the passing years, they realized that the Chadli regime offered them no future. As regards education, 55% of young people are excluded at diploma level; only 10% succeed in passing the baccalaureate exams. Jobs for young people are increasingly rare and there is almost no chance for them to find lodgings — without mentioning all the other legitimate needs of young people at the end of the twentieth century.
Youth in vanguard of the confrontations
Certainly, Chadli's infitah policy gave the illusion of social success in various trades, but many people realize that this was only an illusion that left everyone barely scraping a living. It is young people — excluded from the education system, unemployed and on the street or making some sort of living, and oscillating between a fascination for the model of Western consumerism or trying to fill an ideological gap by looking for a solution in Islam — who were systematically in the vanguard of the
The situation at the beginning of September was particularly tense, exacerbated further by the effects of massive food price rises, an even greater lack of drinking water and the growing shortages of basic products. It was also characterized by various corruption scandals that the press tried hard to play down a month after rumours about them had become public. In this tense social climate, various rumours were circulating from the beginning of September of a call for a general strike at the end of the month and the situation of the popular protest movements around the country.
Chadli made a hard-hitting speech on September 19 against speculation, the fleecing of consumers, currency trafficking and incompetence. But he also attacked all those opposed to his liberal economic reform, which increased the already high voltage of social tension.
This speech had the opposite effect to that expected by his promoters. It was seen rather as a provocation against the mass of the people, given that the social ills that Chadli denounced were the product of his infitah policy, and the fact that in the field of political incompetence nobody could beat him for the gold medal in every category.
From this point, a small spark was sufficient to set off an explosion. Leaving aside its national breadth, the novelty of this popular uprising comes from the fact that it was the working class that provided the spark.
In November 1986, the fuse was lit by a student strike that was brutally repressed. The solidarity movement quickly extended
International Viewpoint #150 • October 31, 1988
ALGERIA to students all over Constantine, to school students and then to all the other young people excluded from the education system who headed up some of the most violent street battles. Two days later, the uprising spread to Sétif in a similar form.
This really rattled the government, who then declared that they were aware of the explosive problem of youth unemployment and would immediately propose some projects to deal with it. But this revolt of the youth in the east of the country did not find a consistent political echo inside the workers' and mass movements. However, the massive repression was the impetus for a political broadening of the democratic movement into important sectors of the intelligentsia and favoured the political renaissance of the student movement. The new term in October 1987 was marked by a quasi-general strike of students against the selection procedures for university, which gave birth to a national coordination of their autonomous committees.
New willingness to fight among workers
The process of recomposition of workers' combativity, on the other hand, was much slower. The strikes by university teachers, hospital doctors and the pilots from Air Algérie were a sort of bridge between the mobilizations of students and intellectuals and the entry onto the scene of the decisive sectors of the working class. Mobilizations for the revival of trade-union branches indicated a new confidence among workers from 1987 on.
But the most significant indicator of this upsurge of combativity among workers came in February 1988 in Saida, a small town where a factory strike extended to the whole industrial zone, something that had
The strikers happened before.
never marched on the centre of the town where they succeeded in forcing the local authorities to hold a general assembly for a public discussion of their demands for wage rises.
The second important indicator of this remobilization came with a strike at a decisive workers' stronghold, the industrial vehicles complex of the SNVI at Rouiba, comprising 10,000 workers. They had previously staged a general strike in July, the first since the repression of 1982. The strikers, demanding a redistribution of "benefits", even tried to go into the local town of
Rouba but changed their minds because of fear of the repression. After a maintenance workers' strike at Algiers airport came up against repression in the week of September 17, it was again metalworkers at SNVI in Rouiba who were behind a strike wave at the end of the month that detonated the week of national uprisings by the youth.
The SNVI strike rapidly extended to other workplaces in the Rouiba-
Reghaïa industrial zone, with strikers clashing with anti-riot squads. In the same period, strikes broke out in other cities and in the capital, Algiers - in particular that of the postal workers on October 1 and 2. This wave of workers' strikes, the biggest since the 1981-82 repres sion, prompted a government/ party/union meeting measures were announced to protect workers' buying power, get basic necessities into the shops, control prices and fight inflation and speculation.
But this response to the generalized social discontent expressed by the strike wave which had been presented by El
Mudjahid [the FLN's newspaper] on October 5 as just a regular meeting with no allusion to the workers' struggles — came too late. On the night of October 4, the young people of Bab el Oued in Algiers took up the workers' challenge, and the following morning they began, in the streets of the capital, the week of the national youth up rising. A spontaneous uprising of outraged young people with no future. An uprising whose violence was only equalled by its spontaneity, in spite of the attempts to politically take it over by Islamic fundamentalists that began at prayer meetings on Friday, October 7.
The bloody military repression of this national uprising will mark popular consciousness for a long time to come. The military government was unveiled in all its savagery. It has shown that it will stop at nothing to safeguard the bourgeois order. Whatever the outcome of this bloody week, a decisive political turning point has begun in Algerian society. President Chadli's mediocre television performance, where he vaguely promised a plan of political reforms after a week of bloody confrontations, will resolve none of the basic problems raised by such a mass uprising. For some time already, the mass of the people have lost any illusions they may have had regarding the bourgeois and anti-social nature of the Chadli regime.
Cruel lack of political leadership
Now, they understand that the solution to their social problems means the overthrow of this bloodthirsty regime. There is one main lesson to draw from this week of uprisings. It is that the violence, the courage and the spontaneity of the youth, the fact that there were simultaneous demonstrations in a number of cities, and the link between the working class and young people are not sufficient in themselves if there is no political expression of workers' and peoples' self-organization. The youth uprising cruelly lacked such a political leadership, and the revolutionary left will have to draw out all the consequences of this. *
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8
"The regime has not only lost its credibility,
Ariane Merri spoke to Marko Hren, Braco Rotar and Tomaz
Mastnak who are currently touring Europe for this Committee.
YUGOSLAVIA
AN YOU tell us the major issues at stake in the trial held
• in Ljubljana?
TM: In order to understand the
Ljubljana trial, you have to take into account the political and economic developments that have taken place in our country since 1984. In very general terms, there are two political tendencies in Yugoslavia. The first is a movement towards democratization and modernization, and the second is a counter-tendency that wants to preserve the status quo, reproduce this system, and ensure that those who have more or less been in power since 1945 stay there.
TENSIONS BETWEEN the various republics and nationalities which make up the Yugoslavian federation have reached new heights with the recent violent demonstrations in Montenegro, one of the many Yugoslavian republics. The demonstrations are linking up with those taking place among the Serbian populations in the Vojvodina region, which has up until now remained relatively calm.
Like Kosovo, where since last July thousands of Serbs and Montenegrins have demonstrated, Vojvodina is an autonomous province of the Serbian republic. Both areas enjoy a large measure of economic and juridical independence, similar to that of the six Yugoslavian republics. A new constitution is now being drawn up, and it is in this context that the Serbian population of these two provinces is demanding to be integrated within the Serbian Republic.
One of the key factors in this resurgence of nationalism is the economic divide between different regions of the country — the standard of living varies strikingly from one part of the country to another - and it is no surprise to see class questions raised alongside demands of a more purely nationalist character. Unsurprisingly, the leader of the Serbian Party, Slobodan Milosevic, has shown himself quite willing to play on Serbian national sentiment, by stating that he is ready to take certain politically turbulent regions like Slovenia in hand. Recent events suggest that this sort of statement may be playing with fire.
This week's national Central Committee meeting, called specifically to discuss Yugoslavia's growing ethnic and economic crises, resolved little and sparked off a new round of mass demonstrations by Serbian nationalists and workers.
It is in this tumultuous context that the July trial of four young Slovenians arrested last May took place, indicted on the pretext of having "revealed military secrets" (see IV 144, June 27, 1988). Convicted by a military tribunal, the four have